3ware 7506, FreeBSD 4.x, Maxtor Disks & SMART Problems.

Jason Thomson jason.thomson at mintel.com
Mon Jun 14 10:42:11 GMT 2004


We have a number of FreeBSD boxes with 7506 series 3ware controllers
(about 10 and about to buy 10 more).  We are generally happy with the
performance and reliability,  but we have a few intermittent,  recurring 
problems.

With some of our boxes we are using 300GB / 320GB Maxtor Maxline II disks.

Occasionally,  a machine with these disks will lock up hard;  the 3ware
controller has stopped responding.  After taking the machine offline,
and using MAXTOR PowerMax tools to analyse the disks,  it becomes clear
that one of the disks has errors.

I have suspicions that the Maxtor disks are raising SMART events that
are not handled by the FreeBSD 3ware twe driver.

Is this a plausible explanation?

Is anyone else aware of this issue,  and is there anything we can do to 
solve / work around this problem?

(We've tried disabling SMART on the disks - but the 7506 card re-enables 
it).



More information:

This is happening on at least 3 machines.

The first time it happened,  we upgraded to FreeBSD 4.10-PRERELEASE 
(cvsupped May 4th).  This uses the 3ware imported drivers.  (We also 
applied the stability patch posted to the Stable list in a bout of straw 
clutching).

We have since seen the same problem on two additional machines (running 
4.9-STABLE from Feb 2nd and April 4th).  We haven't yet upgraded these 
machines - might do soon.

I have sent an email to support at 3ware.com - no response yet - but I only 
sent it last Friday.

Thanks in advance,


Jason.


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